Re: Aroid-L Digest, Vol 133, Issue 1 / Anthurium scherzerianum

Thank you for your offer to let me know should you encounter material of Anthurium scherzerianum. Like I wrote in my introduction to the list, this species used to be a pretty common houseplant in The Netherlands till sometime around the eighties, for which even special pine needle based composts could be bought. That it is no longer available in the general trade no doubt is due to the fact that at least in The Netherlands the horticultural industry has completely switched away from botanical species, and now focuses on the mass production of standardised and probably far more productive hybrid material - plants which have become so cheap that they are often tossed away once they have finished flowering. However, that a showy species like A. scherzerianum is also completely missing from private and research collections (which also seems to be true for Europe) I still find amazing. This species may probably have never been widely available in the US, and this for reasons of the hot summer weather you mention. The big difference of course is that my country is at much higher latitude than most of the US (my hometown Heerenveen is approximately at the same latitude as Edmonton in the Canadian province of Alberta) and our sea climate is much less extreme than the continental climate of most of the US. I am therefore pretty confident that I'd be able to succeed in growing this species, especially so since I don't have any problems either with a number of plants that I bought from Ecuagenera as Anthurium cabrerense (but which may actually be A. caramantae), a species that comes from higher altitudes than A. scherzerianum.

I don't have it in cultivation any more but I think it is reasonably common near the divide at Vara Blanca on the old road to Puerto Viejo from San Jos?. I too have not seen in in any collection in the US. You would have a much better chance to keep it alive in Holland than nearly any living collection here where the summer temperatures are too high. Certainly I will let you know if I encounter it anywhere.